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Wednesday, 11 November 2015

House of Reps receives petitions against CCT Chairman, Danladi Umar

The embattled chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, Mr. Danladi Umar, came under more pressure, yesterday, when the House of Representatives received two different petitions, alleging impropriety and abuse of office in the discharge of his duties.

While one petition is requesting the House to investigate alleged acts of impropriety purportedly committed by Umar, another is requesting the House to investigate the office of the Attorney General of the Federation for its failure to act on investigations allegedly conducted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC which purportedly indicted Umar of corruption.

The two petitions were presented on the floor of the House by the chairman of the House Committee on Army, Rep. Rima Kwewum, PDP, Taraba State on behalf of the authors, Anti-Corruption Network.

In the first petition signed by Ajufo I. Ajufo, the executive secretary of the group, Umar is alleged by the group to have vitiated the due process mechanism in the discharge of his duties especially in the award of contracts.

He was accused of, among others, to have misused public funds by allowing to be paid to him, the sum of N1 million vide payment voucher CCT/ABJ/DC/206/11 on July 14, 2011 to organise his own wedding.

He is also alleged to have approved the payment of N4.2 million to Chinox Global Investment Limited for the “replacement of external security light bulbs.”

“Not only is this monstrous amount a gross inflation of what may have been needed to replace light bulbs in the premises, it is an entirely fictitious contract. No replacement of external security lights were carried out,” the group alleged.

A separate petition to the House alleged negligence on the part of the Office of the Attorney General in prosecuting Umar as recommended by the EFCC.

The group alleged that the erstwhile EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, on June 24, 2014, submitted the report of an investigation to the office of the AG with Ref. No.: EFCC/EC/ JUS/07/117.

“That report was about evidence against Umar. The AG then instructed the EFCC chairman by minuting on the same letter to “ proceed to prosecute the suspects.” The letter from Lamorde was communicated in writing to the EFCC chairman vide letter ref HAGF/EFCC/2014/vol.1/19 dated 26 June 2014.

Alleging bias on the part of the Office of the Attorney General in passing over Umar and prosecuting only his personal assistant, the petitioners said: “This is in clear breach of the order of the AG. Since then, the office of the Attorney General has been silent on this failure to prosecute as directed.

“We believe this neglect is deliberate. This has led us to believe there is a cover-up in this matter. When the Nigerian public becomes aware of this fact, they would be very much interested to know the reason for this cover up,” the group said.